Computing resources may be shared among multiple electronic devices. For example, a distributed computing system may have a number of software licenses for the computing system as a whole that may be allocated among the different electronic devices forming nodes in the distributed computing system. Managing a shared resource may be done, for example, by a central electronic device. Other electronic devices in the computing system may send a message to a central electronic device to request a resource, and the central electronic device may return a message as to whether the resource request may be granted.